WAGE "CUTS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1938, Page 5

WAGE "CUTS"

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Your correspondent "Solvency" in Wednesday's "Post" has used specious arguments in making his assertion to all mothers that "should they vote for the Socialist (alias Labour) candidates on October 15 they will be voting to make a 'cut' in their children's wages." His only attempt to justify such a - ridiculous statement (which fails to camouflage his object of creating political bias regardless of the welfare of the children he mentions) is to quote Whitaker's Almanac Expectation of Life tables to show that there is little prospect of the children of today, who are to contribute to the National Security Fund, living to the age of 65 to draw pensions.

[ That eventuality is wholly an act of Providence, and, in any case, it is but one aspect of the security the National Fund is to afford contributors, i 16-year-olds and otherwise. What of the health benefits that are to accrue to the Social Security Act? The junior j wage-earners will now themselves be [able to provide for the mischance of sickness, invalidity, or unemployment and relieve their parents accordingly; whereas the political philosophy of your, correspondent would deny to them all the character building influence that goes with self-support, and make them burdens upon their parents in times of physical or industrial setbacks.

Again, where opponents of the Government are today professing concern at the fact that 16-year-olds in work will have to pay Is in the £ into the Social Security Fund, parents will remember that the young people of a few years ago could nol> get jobs during the regime of the previous Government—which, undoubtedly, is the Opposition Party today whose candidates are seeking election in the guise of the new name "Nationalists." Let us remember that the leaders of that party had no qualms about "cutting" the wages of everyone in slices of 10 per cent, at a time, inclusive of message boys and other juniors in the State's employ even though many of them belonged to homes where fathers and adult brothers were out of work.—l am, etc.,

J.H.M.